Unhinged (1/1)
by Northlight
Summary: Meet one of the more unbalanced X5s who escaped Manticore that night.


_ Title: Unhinged (1/1)  
Summary: Meet one of the more unbalanced X-5s who escaped that night.  
Rating: PG13 for language.  
Disclaimer: Cameron and Eglee. As much as it shames me to admit it Dee is, however, mine.  
Date: March 23 2001. _

* * *

Dee had a small apartment on the fifth floor. Zack had gone up the fire-escape, hands steady and familiar against the warm metal rungs. The back door was locked. Door and lock were flimsy enough that Zack could open it without the slightest hint of difficulty. Music shuddered through the apartment, something loud and rage filled that made Zack wince. He couldn't comprehend how Dee could willingly subject herself to such noise for the pleasure of it. 

Zack hadn't been looking forward to seeing her. The young woman always strained the extent of Zack's patience. She had been one of the last X-5s he had found. Something had happened to her in the years between the escape and his discovery of her. The others embraced their freedom in unique and impassioned ways, which Zack could understand to some degree even if he did not condone their actions. Dee had slipped beyond the acceptable realm of rebellion against their harsh Manticore upbringing. Caught between restrictions and regulation and the freedom and variety of the world they had escaped into, something vital in Dee had snapped, the force of that break twisting her into something beyond recognition. 

The small battery operated radio was settled atop a small end-table that was peeling dull pink paint. Zack flicked at the knob, turning off the music. She didn't emerge with the silence, nor did she call out her annoyance at his presumptuousness. Dee was a woman of noise and fury, eager to fling herself face to face with him and sneer into the face of his authority. Zack strained against the sudden silence of the apartment, found the sound of dripping water and soft sniffles. Cautious, he made his way towards the bathroom. 

Dee's hair had been dyed a violent blue since the last time he had seen her. She sat in the empty tub, unrestrained blue curls covering her face and hanging over her bloodied arms which were held around her bare knees. She heard his approach, had to have, but remained slumped forward in the tub, her face hidden in the fold of her naked arms. 

"Dee?" Zack didn't approach her. He stood in the doorway, cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. The woman's odd behaviour had thrown him, and deeply ingrained suspicion rose above his concern for her. "What's going on here?" the words were rough with emotions straining against his control. 

"Go away," Dee growled into her flesh. "Go away. Go. _Away!_" The words ended as a hysterical shriek. She jerked her head upwards, her tear-stained face set in fury. She released her legs, twisted slightly to grasp the shampoo bottle on the edge of the tub behind her. With a wordless shriek, she rose in a fluid motion, flinging the uncapped bottle in Zack's direction. She flung herself after it, clenched fists colliding with Zack's chest. 

Zack grabbed her wrists, deceptively delicate feeling beneath his hands. He knocked Dee into the wall with enough force to shake a cry from her. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" Zack snarled. 

"You bastard. You goddamed asshole," Dee groaned. Her eyes were rimmed with mascara and eye-liner, dark blurs beneath her eyes. Her lip was split, blood colouring her lips where her bright lipstick had been worn away. A bruise lay mottled purple, blue and yellow against a sharply defined cheekbone. "I _hate_ you," she hissed even as she turned her arms around in Zack's grip in silent response to his question. 

Nearly healed, but Zack could still make out the lines cut across Dee's wrists. 

"They won't even give me that much," Dee told him, her voice cracking. 

Zack grabbed Dee's chin, forced her to met his eyes. "_Why?_" After everything they had gone through in order to escape and in order to maintain their freedom, he couldn't understand what had driven Dee to such actions. Life was something to be protected with fierce determination. He would not give into death unless he was staring into Lydecker's cold eyes with no hope of escape. And even in such a case, he would not go easily. 

"Why not?" Dee shot back. Zack had released her, and Dee slipped past him. Not bothering to grab for clothing or a towel, she stalked into the living room Zack had passed through on his way towards her. "Do you see this?" she demanded of him, spinning slightly as she gestured at the entirety of the room. "This isn't real." 

Zack cocked a questioning eyebrow at her statement. "How is it not?" 

"No, you wouldn't understand, would you?" Dee replied. "You've always had your leadership position to fall back on. You didn't need to try to adapt to this fucking world. 'I need to take care of you,'" she mimicked Zack, "'I can't relax. I don't have the luxury of playing at normalcy.' You've never understood that this really _is_ playing." Dee stabbed at the room with a broken nail. "This isn't real because a normal person should be living here, and I'm _not_ normal, I'm not _real_, Zack." She shuddered and wrapped her arms about her waist. "I can't do this anymore." 

Anger twisted in Zack's stomach at Dee's concluding words. "You can and you _will_, Dee. I'm not about to let you do this, do you understand, soldier?" 

"Soldier?" Dee mouthed. "I'm not a _soldier_, Zack -- you made sure of _that_ the moment you made us run. You took the only thing I was good at away from me and then let us loose out here." 

Zack's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You didn't have to come," he said coolly. 

"I wasn't about to disobey my CO," Dee screeched. 

"You've delighted in doing nothing but since I found you." 

Dee's upper lip pulled back into a snarl. "That's because I finally realized that you're a real fuck up, Zack." Her hair spun around her as Dee turned sharply. Blue curls bounced and collided against her bare back as she walked away from Zack, moving towards the closed door that he knew concealed the apartment's sole bedroom. She flung the door open and disappeared into the room. Her voice, shrill and accusing, rang out a moment later. "Well, aren't you coming, Zack? Don't you want to get all the grim details in order to properly chastise me?" 

Zack could clearly pick out the man's body sprawled out on the bed. 

"Zack, meet Rick. I'm afraid he isn't up to company at the moment since I seem to have broken him. Strange that, isn't it? Seems he wasn't quite as tough as he boasted." She touched the bruise on her cheek with her fingertips. "I asked him to, you know. Closed my eyes and it was nearly like home all over again." Dee's lower lip began to tremble and she turned away from Zack. Her motions were quick and jerky as she pulled a bra and pair of underwear from the dresser beside the bed. She held them bunched loosely in her hands, at a sudden loss as she looked at them. "The thing is, it's not home. I never cried while I was in Manticore, Zack. And I couldn't stop here. Because it's all so useless and hopeless and I would have fucked him--" 

Dee slid to the carpeted ground as Zack watched, at a loss for words. He had never been good at emotional confrontations, and Dee was broken beyond his ability to patch her back together. He remembered the play of violence against his own flesh. Zack had never missed the feel of bruising flesh and cracking bone, but violence had been ingrained so deeply into his being that expressing it in some manner was all but necessary. Dee was folded over next to the bed, crying into the clean underclothes she had found. He knelt down next to her, an awkwardly soothing hand against her trembling shoulder. "It's going to be fine," Zack told her. 

"Don't bullshit me, Zack. It isn't going to be anywhere near fine." Drained, Dee limply fell against Zack. She twisted her hands in the material of his jacket and burrowed her face against his chest. "I'm coming apart bit by bit, and I don't know how to keep myself from falling." Dee's fingers tightened, nails digging into Zack's jacket. "I thought about just going back, you know. Just turn myself into Lydecker and let them make me what I was supposed to be. I don't think that Manticore would quite go for that. I doubt they'd even want me now." 

Wordless, Zack rested his chin against the crown of Dee's head, his hand running helpless strokes up and down her heated back. 

"Have you ever wondered whether it's worth it?" Dee's breath was hot through the material of Zack's shirt, tears damp against the cloth. 

"Never." 

Dee snorted. "You just want to live to be a free seventy year old for the pleasure of outlasting them all." 

"I think that's a worthy goal, wouldn't you?" 

Dee simply sighed against him. 

~end~ 


End file.
